Nebula Awards Showcase 2018

EXCERPT FROM ARABELLA OF MARS ^{DAVID D. LEVINE}

David D. Levine is the author of the novels Arabella of Mars, Arabella and the Battle of Venus, and over fifty science fiction and fantasy stories. His story “Tk’Tk’Tk” won the Hugo, and he has been shortlisted for awards including the Hugo, Nebula, Campbell, and Sturgeon. Stories have appeared in Asimov’s, Analog, F&SF, Tor.com, numerous Year’s Best anthologies, and his award-winning collection Space Magic.

Arabella Ashby lay prone atop a dune, her whole length pressed tight upon the cool red sands of Mars. The silence of the night lay unbroken save for the distant cry of a hunting khulekh, and a wind off the desert brought a familiar potpourri to her nose: khoresh-sap, and the cinnamon smell of Martians, and the sharp, distinctive fragrance of the sand itself. She glanced up at Phobos—still some fingers’ span short of Arcturus—then back down to the darkness of the valley floor where Michael would, she knew, soon appear.

Beneath the fur-trimmed leather of her thukhong, her heart beat a fast tattoo, racing not only from the exertion of her rush to the top of this dune but from the exhilaration of delicious anticipation. For this, she was certain, was the night she would finally defeat her brother in the game of shorosh khe kushura, or Hound and Hare.

The game was simple enough. To-night Michael played the part of the kushura, a nimble runner of the plains, while Arabella took the role of the shorosh, a fierce and cunning predator. His assignment this night was to race from the stone outcrop they called Old Broken Nose to the drying-sheds on the south side of the manor house, a distance of some two miles; hers was to stop him. But though Khema had said the youngest Martian children would play this game as soon as their shells hardened, it was also a sophisticated strategic exercise… one that Michael, three years her elder, had nearly always won in the weeks they’d been playing it.

But to-night the victory would be Arabella’s. For she had been observing Michael assiduously for the last few nights, and she had noted that despite Khema’s constant injunctions against predictability, he nearly always traversed this valley when he wished to evade detection. Its sides were steep, its shadows deep at every time of night, and the soft sands of the valley floor hushed every footfall—but that would avail him little if his pursuer reached the valley before he did and prepared an ambush. Which was exactly what she had done.

Again she cast her eyes upward. At Michael’s usual pace he would arrive just as Phobos in his passage through the sky reached the bright star Arcturus—about half-past two in the morning. But as she looked up, her eye was drawn by another point of light, brighter than Arcturus and moving still faster than Phobos: an airship, cruising so high above the planet that her sails caught the sun’s light long before dawn. From the size and brightness of the moving light she must be a Marsman—one of the great Mars Company ships, the “aristocrats of the air,” that plied the interplanetary atmosphere between Mars and Earth. Perhaps some of her masts or spars or planks had even originated here, on this very plantation, as one of the great khoresh-trees that towered in patient, soldierly rows north and east of the manor house.

Some day, Arabella thought, perhaps she might take passage on such a ship. To sail the air, and see the asteroids, and visit the swamps of Venus would be a grand adventure indeed. But to be sure, no matter how far she traveled she would always return to her beloved Woodthrush Woods.

Suddenly a shuff of boots on sand snatched her awareness from the interplanetary atmosphere back to the valley floor. Michael!

She had been careless. While her attention had been occupied by the ship, Michael had drawn nearly abreast of her position. Now she had mere moments in which to act.

Scrambling to her feet in the dune’s soft sand, she hurled herself down into the shadowed canyon, a tolerable twelve-foot drop that would give her the momentum she needed to overcome her brother’s advantages in size and weight.

But in her haste she misjudged her leap, landing instead in a thorny gorosh-shrub halfway up the canyon’s far wall and earning a painful scratch on her head. She cursed enthusiastically in English and Martian as she struggled to free herself from the shrub’s thorns and sticky, acrid-smelling sap.

“Heavens, dear sister,” Michael laughed, breathing hard from his run. “Such language!” He doubled back in order to aid her in extricating herself.

But Arabella had not given up on the game. She held out her hand as though for assistance… and as soon as he grasped it, she pulled him down into the shrub with her. The thorny branch that had trapped her snapped as he fell upon it, and the two of them rolled together down the canyon wall, tussling and laughing in the sand like a pair of tureth pups.

Then they rolled into a patch of moonlight, and though Michael had the upper hand he suddenly ceased his attempts to pin her to the ground. “What is the matter, dear brother?” Arabella gasped, even as she prepared to hurl him over her head with her legs. But in this place there was light enough to see his face clearly, and his expression was so grave she checked herself.

“You are injured,” he said, disentangling himself from her.

“’Tis only a scratch,” she replied. But the pain when she touched her injured scalp was sharp, and her hand when she brought it away and examined it beneath Phobos’s dim light was black with blood.

Michael brought his handkerchief from his thukhong pocket and pressed it against the wound, causing Arabella to draw in a hissing breath through her teeth. “Lie still,” he said, his voice quite serious.

“Is it very bad, then?”

He made no reply, but as she lay on the cool sand, her breath fogging the air and the perspiration chilling on her face, she felt something seeping through her hair and dripping steadily from the lower edge of her ear, and the iron smell of blood was strong in the air. Michael’s jaw tightened, and he pressed harder with the handkerchief; Arabella’s breath came shallow, and she determined not to cry out from the pain.

And then Khema appeared, slipping silently from the shadows, the subtle facets of her eyes reflecting in the starlight. She had, of course, been watching them all along, unobserved; her capabilities of tracking and concealment were far beyond any thing Arabella or Michael could even begin to approach. “You leapt too late, tutukha,” she said. A tutukha was a small inoffensive herbivore, and Khema often called her this as a pet name.

“I will do better next time, itkhalya,” Arabella replied through gritted teeth.

“I am certain you will.”

Michael looked up at Khema, his eyes shining. “It’s not stopping.”

Without a word Khema knelt and inspected the wound, her eye-stalks bending close and the hard cool carapace of her pointed fingertips delicately teasing the matted hair aside. Arabella bit her lip hard; she would not cry.

“This is beyond my skills,” Khema said at last, sitting back on her haunches. “You require a human physician.”

At that Arabella did cry out. “No!” she cried, clutching at her itkhalya’s sleeve. “We cannot! Mother will be furious!”

“We will endeavor to keep this from her.”

The pain of Dr. Fellowes’s needle as it stitched the wound shut was no worse than the humiliation Arabella felt as she lay on a cot in her father’s office. From the shelf above Father’s desk, his collection of small automata looked down in judgement: the scribe, the glockenspiel player, and especially the dancer, still given pride of place though it no longer functioned, all seemed to regard her with disappointment in their painted eyes.

Her father too, she knew, must be horribly disappointed in her, though his face with its high forehead and shock of gray hair showed more concern than dissatisfaction. Though no tears had fallen, his eyes glimmered in the flickering lamplight, and when she considered how she had let him down Arabella felt a hot sting of shame in her own eyes.

Even the crude little drummer she herself had built, a simple clockwork with just one motion, seemed let down by its creator. She had been so proud when she had presented it to Father on his birthday last year and he had placed it on the shelf with his most treasured possessions; now, she felt sure, he would surely retire it to some dark corner.

Again and again the needle stabbed Arabella’s scalp; the repeated tug and soft hiss of the thread passing through her skin seemed to go on and on. “A little more light, please,” the doctor said, and Khema adjusted the wick on the lamp. “Not much longer.” The doctor’s clothing smelled of dust and leather, and the sweat of the huresh on which Michael had fetched him from his home. Michael himself looked on from behind him, his sandy hair and heart-shaped face so very like her own, his blue eyes filled with worry.

“There now,” said the doctor, clipping off the thread. “All finished.” Khema brought him a washbasin, and as he cleaned the blood from his hands he said, “Scalp wounds do bleed quite frightfully, but the actual danger is slight; if you keep the wound clean it should heal up nicely. And even if there should be a scar, it will be hidden by your hair.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Arabella said, sitting up and examining his work in the window-glass—the sun would rise soon, but the sky was still dark enough to give a good reflection. Her appearance, she was forced to acknowledge, was quite shocking, with dried blood everywhere, but she thought that once she had cleaned herself she might be able to arrange her hair so as to hide the stitches from her mother.

But that opportunity was denied her, for just at that moment the office door burst open and Mother charged in, still in her night-dress. “Arabella!” she cried. “What has happened to you?”

“She is quite well, Mother,” Michael said. “She only fell and hit her head.”

“She is not ‘well.’” Mother sat on the edge of the cot and held Arabella’s head in her hands. “She is covered in blood, and what on Earth is this horrific garment you are wearing? It exposes your limbs quite shamefully.”

Arabella had been dreading this discovery. “It is called a thukhong, Mother, and it keeps me far warmer than any English-made dress.”

“An ugly Martian word for an ugly Martian garment, one entirely unsuitable for a proper English lady.” She glowered at Arabella’s father. “I thought we agreed when she turned twelve that there would be no more of… this.” She waved a disgusted hand, taking in the thukhong, the blood, the desert outside, and the planet Mars in general. Dr. Fellowes seemed to be trying to disappear into the wainscoting.

Father dropped his eyes from Mother’s withering gaze. “She is still only sixteen, dear, and she is a very… active girl. Surely she may be allowed a few more years of freedom before being compelled to settle down? She has kept up with her studies… .”

But even as he spoke, Mother’s lips went quite white from being pressed together, and finally she burst out, “I will have no more of your rationalizations!” She stood and paced briskly back and forth in front of Father’s broad khoresh-wood desk, her fury building still further as she warmed to her subject. “For years now I have struggled to bring Arabella up properly, despite the primitive conditions on this horrible planet, and now I find that she is risking her life traipsing around the trackless desert by night, wearing leather trousers no less!” She rounded on Arabella. “How long have you been engaging in this disgraceful behavior?”

Arabella glanced to Michael, her father, and Khema for support, but in the face of her mother’s wrath they were as defenseless as she. “Only a few weeks,” she muttered, eyes downcast, referring only to the game of shorosh khe kushura. She and Michael had actually been exploring the desert under Khema’s tutelage—learning of Mars’s flora, fauna, and cultures and engaging in games of strategy and combat—since they were both quite small.

“Only a few weeks,” Mother repeated, jaw clenched and nostrils flaring. “Then perhaps it is not too late.” She stared hard at Arabella a moment longer, then gave a firm nod and turned to Father. “I am taking the children back home. And this time I will brook no argument.”

Arabella felt as though the floor had dropped from under her. “No!” she cried.

Without facing Arabella, Mother raised a finger to silence her. “You see what she has become!” she continued to Father. “Willful, disobedient, disrespectful. And Fanny and Chloë are already beginning to follow in her filthy footsteps.” Now her tone changed, and despite Arabella’s anguish at the prospect of being torn from her home she could not deny the genuine sadness and fear in her mother’s eyes. “Please, dear. Please. You must agree. You must consider our posterity! If Arabella is allowed to continue on this path, and her sisters too… what decent man would have them? They will be left as spinsters, doomed to a lonely old age on a barbarous planet.”

Arabella bit her lip and hugged herself tightly, feeling lost and helpless as she watched her father’s face. Taking Arabella, Michael, and the two little girls to England—a place to which Mother always referred as “back home,” though all of the children had been born on Mars and had never known any other home—was something she had often spoken of, though never so definitively or immediately. But with this incident something had changed, something deep and fundamental, and plainly Father was seriously considering the question.

He pursed his lips and furrowed his brow. He stroked his chin and looked to Mother, to Michael, to Arabella—his eyes beneath the gray brows looking very stern—and then out the window, at the sun just beginning to peep above the rows of khoresh-trees.

Finally he sighed deeply and turned back to Mother. “You may have the girls,” he said in a resigned tone. “But Michael will remain here, to help me with the business of the plantation.”

“But Father… ,” Arabella began, until a minute shake of his head stopped her words. The look in his eyes showed clearly that he did not desire this outcome, but it was plain to all that this time Mother would not be appeased.

Arabella looked to Michael for support, but though his eyes brimmed with tears his shoulders slumped and his hands, still stained with Arabella’s blood, hung ineffectually at his sides. “I am sorry,” he whispered.

Khema, too, stood silently in the corner, hands folded and eye-stalks downcast. Bold, swift, and powerful she might be in the desert, but within the manor house she was only a servant and must submit to Mother’s wishes.

“Very well,” said Mother, after a long considering pause. “Michael may remain. But the Ashby women… are going home.” And she smiled.

That smile, to Arabella, was like a judge’s gavel pronouncing sentence of death.

Arabella eased her bedroom door open and crept into the dark hallway. All about her the house lay silent, servants and masters alike tucked safe in their beds. Only the gentle tick of the tall clock in the parlor disturbed the night.

Shielding the candle with one hand, Arabella slipped down the hallway, her bare feet making no sound on the cool boards. She kept close to the walls, where the floor was best supported and the boards did not creak, but now and again she took a long, slow step to avoid a spot she had learned was likely to squeak.

Down the stairs and across the width of the house she crept, until she reached the drawing-room. In the corner farthest from the fireplace stood the harpsichord, and the silent figure that sat at its keyboard.

Brenchley’s Automaton Harpsichord Player.

Nearly life-sized and dressed in the height of fashion from eight years ago, when it had originally been manufactured, the automaton sat with jointed ivory fingers poised over the instrument’s keys. Its face was finely crafted of smooth, polished birch for a lifelike appearance, the eyes with their painted lashes demurely downcast. A little dust had accumulated in its décolletage, but in the shifting light of Arabella’s little candle it almost seemed to be breathing.

Arabella had always been the only person in the family who shared her father’s passion for automata. The many hours they had spent together in the drawing-room of the manor house at Woodthrush Woods, winding and oiling and polishing his collection, were among her most treasured memories. He had even shared with her his knowledge of the machines’ workings, though Mother had heartily disapproved of such an unladylike pursuit.

The harpsichord player had arrived at Marlowe Hall, their residence in England, not long after they had emigrated—or, as Arabella considered it, been exiled—from Mars. It had been accompanied by a note from Father, reminding them that it was one of his most beloved possessions and saying that he hoped it would provide pleasant entertainment. But Arabella, knowing that Father understood as well as she did how little interest the rest of the family had in automata, had taken it as a sort of peace offering, or apology, from him specifically to her—a moving, nearly living representative and reminder that, although unimaginably distant, he still loved her.

But, alas, all his great expense and careful packing had gone for naught, for when it had been uncrated it refused to play a note. Mother, never well-disposed toward her husband’s expensive pastime, had been none too secretly relieved.

That had been nearly eight months ago. Eight months of frilly dresses and stultifying conversation, and unceasing oppressive damp, and more than any thing else the constant inescapable heaviness. Upon first arriving on Earth, to her shame Arabella had found herself so unaccustomed to the planet’s gravity that she had no alternative but to be carried from the ship in a sedan-chair. She had barely been able to stand for weeks, and even now she felt heavy, awkward, and clumsy, distrustful of her body and of her instincts. Plates and pitchers seemed always to crash to the floor in her vicinity, and even the simple act of throwing and catching a ball was beyond her.

Not that she was allowed to perform any sort of bodily activity whatsoever, other than walking and occasionally dancing. Every one on Earth, it seemed, shared Mother’s attitudes concerning the proper behavior of an English lady, and the slightest display of audacity, curiosity, adventure, or initiative was met with severe disapproval. So she had been reduced, even as she had on Mars, to skulking about by night—but here she lacked the companionship of Michael and Khema.

On Mars, Michael, her elder and only brother, had been her constant companion, studying with her by day and racing her across the dunes by night. And Khema, their Martian nanny or itkhalya, had been to the two of them nurse, protector, and tutor in all things Martian. How she missed them both.

Setting her candle down, Arabella seated herself on the floor behind the automaton and lifted its skirts, in a fashion that would have been most improper if it were human. Beneath the suffocating layers of muslin and linen the automaton’s ingenious mechanisms gleamed in the candlelight, brass and ivory and mahogany each adding their own colors to a silent symphony of light and shadow. Here was the mainspring, there the escapement, there the drum. The drum was the key to the whole mechanism; its pins and flanges told the device where to place its fingers, when to nod, when to appear to breathe. From the drum, dozens of brass fingers transmitted instructions to the rest of the device through a series of levers, rods, springs, and wires.

Arabella breathed in the familiar scents of metal, whale-oil, and beeswax before proceeding. She had begun attempting to repair the device about two months ago, carefully concealing her work from her mother, the servants, and even her sisters. She had investigated its mysteries, puzzled out its workings, and finally found the displaced cog that had stilled the mechanism. But having solved that puzzle, Arabella had continued working with the machine, and in the last few weeks she had even begun making a few cautious modifications. The pins in the drum could be unscrewed, she had learned, and placed in new locations to change the automaton’s behavior.

At the moment her project was to teach it to play “God Save the King,” as the poor mad fellow could certainly use the Lord’s help. She had the first few measures working nearly to her satisfaction and was just about to start on “Send him victorious.” Laying the folded hearth-rug atop the harpsichord’s strings to muffle the sound, she wound the automaton’s mainspring and began to work, using a nail-file, cuticle-knife, and tweezers to reposition the delicate pins.

She was not concerned that her modifications might be discovered between her working sessions. It was only out of deference to Mr. Ashby, the absent paterfamilias, that her mother even allowed it to remain in the drawing-room. The servants found the device disquieting and refused to do more than dust it occasionally. And as for Fanny and Chloë, Arabella’s sisters were both too young to be allowed to touch the delicate mechanism.

For many pleasant hours Arabella worked, repeatedly making small changes, rolling the drum back with her hand, then letting it play. She would not be satisfied with a mere music-box rendition of the tune; she wanted a performance, with all the life and spirit of a human player. And so she adjusted the movements of the automaton’s body, the tilt of its head, and the subtle motions of its pretended breath as well as the precise timing and rhythm of its notes.

She would pay for her indulgence on the morrow, when her French tutor would stamp his cane each time she yawned—though even when well-slept, she gave him less heed than he felt he deserved. Why bother studying French? England had been at war with Bonaparte since Arabella was a little girl, and showed no sign of ever ceasing to do so.

But for now none of that was of any consequence.

When she worked on the automaton, she felt close to her father.

The sky was already lightening in the east, and a few birds were beginning to greet the sun with their chirruping song, as Arabella heaved the hearth-rug out of the harpsichord and spread it back in its accustomed place. Perhaps some day she would have an opportunity to hear the automaton perform without its heavy, muting encumbrance.

She looked around, inspecting the drawing-room with a critical eye. Had she left any thing out of place? No, she had not. With a satisfied nod she turned and began to make her way back to her bedroom.

But before she even reached the stairs, her ear was caught by a drumming sound from without.

Hoofbeats. The sound of a single horse, running hard. Approaching rapidly.

Who could possibly be out riding at this hour?

Quickly extinguishing the candle, Arabella scurried up the stairs in the dawn light and hid herself in the shadows at the top of the steps. Shortly thereafter, a fist hammered on the front door. Arabella peered down through the banister at the front door, consumed with curiosity.

Only a few moments passed before Cole, the butler, came to open the door. He, too, must have heard the rider’s hoofbeats.

The man at the door was a post-rider, red-eyed and filthy with dust. From his leather satchel he drew out a thin letter, a single sheet, much travel-worn and bearing numerous post-marks.

It was heavily bordered in black. Arabella suppressed a gasp.

A black-bordered letter meant death, and was sadly familiar. Even in the comparatively short space of time since her arrival on Earth, no fewer than five such letters had arrived in this small community, each bearing news of the loss of a brother or father or uncle to Bonaparte’s monstrous greed. But Arabella had no relatives in the army or navy, and had no expectation of her family receiving such a letter.

“Three pounds five shillings sixpence,” the post-rider said, dipping his head in acknowledgement of the outrageousness of the postage. “It’s an express, all the way from Mars.”

At that Arabella was forced to bite her knuckle to prevent herself from crying aloud.

Shaking his head, Cole placed the letter on a silver tray and directed the rider to the servants’ quarters, where he would receive his payment and some refreshment before being sent on his way. As Cole began to climb the stairs Arabella scurried back to her room, her heart pounding.

Arabella paced in her bedroom, sick with worry. Her hands worked at her handkerchief as she went, twisting and straining the delicate fabric until it threatened to tear asunder.

A black-bordered letter. An express. No one would send such dire news by such an expensive means unless it concerned a member of the family. She forced herself to hope that it might be an error, or news of some distant relative of whose existence she had not even been aware… but as the silence went on and on, that hope diminished swiftly.

Who was it who had passed? Father, or Michael? Which would be worse? She loved them both so dearly. Michael and she were practically twins, and he had many more years ahead of him, so his loss would surely be the greater tragedy. But Father… the man who had shared with her his love of automata, who had sat her on his knee and taught her the names of the stars, who had quietly encouraged her to dare, to try, to risk, despite Mother’s objections… to lose him would be terrible, terrible indeed.

Every fiber of her being insisted that she run to her mother’s room, burst through the door, and demand an answer. But that would be unladylike, and, as Mother had repeatedly admonished, unladylike behavior was entirely unacceptable under even the most pressing circumstances. And so she paced, and pulled her handkerchief to shreds, and tried not to cry.

And then, startling though not a surprise, a knock came on the door. It was Nellie, her mother’s handmaid. “Mrs. Ashby requests your presence, Miss Ashby.”

“Thank you, Nellie.”

Trembling, Arabella followed Nellie to her mother’s dressing-room, where Fanny and Chloë, already present, were gathered in a miserable huddle with their mother. The black-bordered letter lay open on her mother’s writing-desk, surrounded by the scattered fragments of the seal, which was of black wax.

Arabella stood rooted, just inside the door, her eyes darting from the letter to her mother and sisters. It was as though it were a lukhosh, or some other dreadful poisonous creature, that had already struck them down and was now lying in wait for her. She wondered whether she was expected to pick it up and read it.

She ached to know what the letter contained. She wanted nothing more than to flee the room.

Nellie cleared her throat. “Ma’am?” Mother raised her head, her eyes flowing with tears. Noticing Arabella, she gently patted the settee by her side. The girls shifted to make room for her.

Arabella sat. Each of her sisters clutched one of her hands, offering comfort despite their own misery.

“The news is… it is… it is Mr. Ashby,” Mother said. She held her head up straight, though her chin trembled. “Your father has passed on.”

“Father…?” Arabella whispered.

And even though the distance between planets was so unimaginably vast… even though the news must be months old… even though it had been over eight months since she had seen him with her own eyes… somehow, some intangible connection had still remained between her and her father, and at that moment she felt that connection part, tearing like rotted silk.

And she too collapsed in sobs.